Lost Konix Successor Title 'Magician's Apprentice' Resurfaces After 30 Years
Conjuring Up a Lost Classic.
In a remarkable feat of digital archaeology, a fully completed game created for the phantom hardware that followed the ill-fated Konix Multi-system has been unearthed and made playable for the first time in over three decades. 'Magician’s Apprentice', developed by Dark Technologies in 1993, represents a tangible link to a fascinating, yet commercially doomed, chapter in British gaming hardware history.
The game itself, a colourful platformer developed primarily by Joe Booth with graphics attributed to an 'Alan', wasn't intended for the original Konix machine. Instead, it targeted what became informally known as the 'Multi-System 2'. This wasn't an official product, rather a label sometimes applied to hardware based on the evolved 'Slipstream' chipset developed after Konix folded.
'Magician's Apprentice' was finished, polished, and ready. Yet, the commercial failure of the underlying hardware meant it was shelved, seemingly forever. Its only public appearance was a year later, ported (by a different programmer) to PC and bundled somewhat obscurely with 'Alien Olympics', albeit with added intro/outro sequences and tweaked music. The original version remained lost.
Fast forward to 2025. Preservation group Games That Weren’t (GTW), while archiving code with assistance from industry veterans Mark Greenshields and Darren Melbourne, were tipped off about the potential existence of the original 'Magician’s Apprentice'. Diligent searching yielded not just source code, but complete builds. The hurdle? No hardware, and thus no way to run them.
Credit: Games That Weren't
Enter Lee Hammerton, developer of the 'Slipstream' emulator – itself a remarkable project dedicated to emulating the unreleased Konix hardware and its descendants. GTW passed the recovered files to Hammerton and Konix archivist Mark Campbell. On 5th April 2025, Hammerton embarked on a live Twitch stream, aiming to breathe life into the code. Astonishingly, within an hour, visuals flickered onto the screen, and by the stream's end, Hammerton had played the game through to completion.
Hammerton has since updated his Slipstream emulator to support 'Magician's Apprentice'. While minor wrinkles remain – some sound effects are absent, and the outro has audio glitches which Hammerton hopes to address – the core game is now accessible. Anyone can download the emulator and the game data (details typically found via the Games That Weren't website) and experience this lost piece of gaming history. It stands as likely the first, perhaps only, completed title for the MSU-based hardware, rescued thanks to a collaborative effort spanning decades of quiet dedication and hours of intricate reverse engineering.
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